In my last update I wrote about getting started in Tech 2 manufacturing, using the alt that I had painstakingly trained up.
It has been a few months now and I'm still working on manufacturing. I'm sure I took some time off between the last post and now, but right now I'm still selling items from one of my latest batches. I'm making pretty good profits. IPH tells me I'm often getting 50% returns, which whittle down with competition for the items in my local market. Nonetheless, it has been profitable even though the actual ISK per hour might be low.
I have found some items that sell pretty well and have been manufacturing those. I also dipped my toes into T2 ship production. Building T2 ships is just like building anything else, but it takes much longer to invent and my skills for ships are lower than my other skills, so I fail more often. Ships in my market move slower than other things too, and it doesn't help that I get undercut on slow moving items. Nonetheless, it has been fun building ships and I have a much healthier respect for people who build the larger ships.
I briefly explored building the new(ish) T3 destroyers. However, you need a POS to build them and based on what I can see you can easily lose ISK building them, especially when you factor in the fuel costs and opportunity cost of building something else. I'll still keep my eye on that, though.
Speaking of POSes, I still build out of a station. Right now I don't think I'm producing enough to take advantage of the bonuses of using a POS, but I can certainly see how producing things 25% faster would be beneficial. Assuming I could sell what I was making and continuously run the lines, I'm sure the fuel costs would wash out. However, I have heard that you need to play material tetris and I have zero interest in doing that. Building out of a station with a single hangar is easy when all you need to do is load up the T2 BPC and click build.
Right now my biggest hurdle is keeping my lines going. I tend to build everything I planned to build, sell everything that I built, then start researching what to build next/ gathering the materials. What I should be doing is keeping the lines going, because downtime in manufacturing is wasted time and wasted ISK.
It is nice seeing the wallet increasing, though. Hopefully it keeps up and I don't make any major blunders.
Showing posts with label industry. Show all posts
Showing posts with label industry. Show all posts
Friday, December 18, 2015
Monday, August 17, 2015
Getting Started in T2 Manufacturing
As readers of my blog might remember, I spent a lot of time months back training up a tech 2 manufacturing character. I had read at the time that while trading was a good way of making ISK, manufacturing will scale better.
Now, to be fair, I wasn't putting enough time into trading to make scalability a deciding factor. However, regional trading was growing boring and there was too much competition in station trading to make it worthwhile for me.
I decided to move my manufacturing character out to a system away from the major trade hubs. For some time now I've wanted to seed a non-major market and explore the benefits and disadvantages of doing so. Obviously, less supply means prices can be higher, however less demand can drive prices down or not drive sales at all.
I fired up the trusty IPH tool and ran a few calculations. Not surprisingly, the sales to volume ratios were less than complete for this non-major region in the game. I generally take the SVR to give me some indication of demand in a given region and confirm it from the market window in game. I picked a couple of items that I thought would sell well and seemed to have demand and sent my freighter to a hub to purchase everything I needed.
An important note here is that I only chose items that could be built from components. I thought about doing the raw materials approach but there is a limited supply of minerals on the local market and I didn't want to spend a bunch of time manufacturing the components necessary to build whatever it was that I was building. Plus I didn't want to get into hauling and refining ores.
While my freighter was on the long journey back from the trade hub, I went and gathered the blueprints that I needed and started copying them. One important thing to know about T2 production is that you need lots of blueprint copies (BPCs). I quickly found that I was able to fill up all of my slots running copying jobs, and soon after that I was filling my slots with invention jobs. The number of slots you have is one of the biggest limiting factors to a single character doing tech 2 production. It is not surprising to me that people train up alts that have the sole purpose of being "copy monkeys" - copying blueprints so that the highly trained manufacturing alt can focus on invention and production.
Eventually, I had all my T2 BPCs and all of the components from my trade hub run. I started building the T2 items and listed them on the market. The first thing I noticed is that there were a couple others building what seemed to be the same items as me. I believe that these individuals probably also used IPH and the SVR to select items, as it seemed that we were competing in similar zones. One person in particular had a habit of undercutting in 0.03-0.05 ISK increments, which meant that I could tell that I was likely competing with the same person in different areas.
The second thing that I noticed was that it was easy to miss out on a day of the low price but high volume items like drones, for example, if you were undercut and didn't notice or weren't online to update your sell orders. Things like drones sold pretty well, usually in batches of 5 to 10 at a time, however the profits are low in absolute terms. I was starting to get flashbacks of when I was doing trading where certain items were profitable (i.e.: 20% or more) but the absolute amount of profit was too low to account for the effort it took to maintain. However, the things that have higher profit are also the things that sell slower (if at all).
After a couple of weeks of selling everything I had originally planned on selling, I ended up with about half a billion in profit. Not too bad considering I was only updating my orders maybe twice a day, before and after work, with a little more effort on weekends. I also came away with some valuable lessons, like keep track of what you planned to manufacture, because it's easy to forget what you want to make when you're faced with an hangar full of tons of manufacturing components.
With all of these lessons in mind, I sent my freighter alt back to a trade hub to pick up more supplies with some different items in mind. I'm going to see how these items sell compared to my previous ones to see if I can edge out more profit. I have also been considering renting an office in the station that I base out of so that I could limit the amount of trading between characters I do, and also would make having a copy whore much easier to manage in the future if I want to do that.
All in all, my first serious attempt at T2 manufacturing has been a success and I'm looking forward to the next couple of weeks as I try to determine what items to make to maximize my profits.
Now, to be fair, I wasn't putting enough time into trading to make scalability a deciding factor. However, regional trading was growing boring and there was too much competition in station trading to make it worthwhile for me.
I decided to move my manufacturing character out to a system away from the major trade hubs. For some time now I've wanted to seed a non-major market and explore the benefits and disadvantages of doing so. Obviously, less supply means prices can be higher, however less demand can drive prices down or not drive sales at all.
I fired up the trusty IPH tool and ran a few calculations. Not surprisingly, the sales to volume ratios were less than complete for this non-major region in the game. I generally take the SVR to give me some indication of demand in a given region and confirm it from the market window in game. I picked a couple of items that I thought would sell well and seemed to have demand and sent my freighter to a hub to purchase everything I needed.
An important note here is that I only chose items that could be built from components. I thought about doing the raw materials approach but there is a limited supply of minerals on the local market and I didn't want to spend a bunch of time manufacturing the components necessary to build whatever it was that I was building. Plus I didn't want to get into hauling and refining ores.
While my freighter was on the long journey back from the trade hub, I went and gathered the blueprints that I needed and started copying them. One important thing to know about T2 production is that you need lots of blueprint copies (BPCs). I quickly found that I was able to fill up all of my slots running copying jobs, and soon after that I was filling my slots with invention jobs. The number of slots you have is one of the biggest limiting factors to a single character doing tech 2 production. It is not surprising to me that people train up alts that have the sole purpose of being "copy monkeys" - copying blueprints so that the highly trained manufacturing alt can focus on invention and production.
Eventually, I had all my T2 BPCs and all of the components from my trade hub run. I started building the T2 items and listed them on the market. The first thing I noticed is that there were a couple others building what seemed to be the same items as me. I believe that these individuals probably also used IPH and the SVR to select items, as it seemed that we were competing in similar zones. One person in particular had a habit of undercutting in 0.03-0.05 ISK increments, which meant that I could tell that I was likely competing with the same person in different areas.
The second thing that I noticed was that it was easy to miss out on a day of the low price but high volume items like drones, for example, if you were undercut and didn't notice or weren't online to update your sell orders. Things like drones sold pretty well, usually in batches of 5 to 10 at a time, however the profits are low in absolute terms. I was starting to get flashbacks of when I was doing trading where certain items were profitable (i.e.: 20% or more) but the absolute amount of profit was too low to account for the effort it took to maintain. However, the things that have higher profit are also the things that sell slower (if at all).
After a couple of weeks of selling everything I had originally planned on selling, I ended up with about half a billion in profit. Not too bad considering I was only updating my orders maybe twice a day, before and after work, with a little more effort on weekends. I also came away with some valuable lessons, like keep track of what you planned to manufacture, because it's easy to forget what you want to make when you're faced with an hangar full of tons of manufacturing components.
With all of these lessons in mind, I sent my freighter alt back to a trade hub to pick up more supplies with some different items in mind. I'm going to see how these items sell compared to my previous ones to see if I can edge out more profit. I have also been considering renting an office in the station that I base out of so that I could limit the amount of trading between characters I do, and also would make having a copy whore much easier to manage in the future if I want to do that.
All in all, my first serious attempt at T2 manufacturing has been a success and I'm looking forward to the next couple of weeks as I try to determine what items to make to maximize my profits.
Monday, February 23, 2015
Building a POS (Part 3)
 |
| My reaction lines. |
Well, it's done. I finished onlining all of my modules, brought the gas in from a trade hub and set up two different reaction lines. This took a surprising amount of work to complete. It took me a week to find the time to get everything done, although I'm sure someone with more time than I have could have gotten it finished much faster.
I like the idea of reactions because it is semi-passive income once you set it up. Of course, you have to continually go back and reload your reactors, including managing the logistics of bringing new gas in, taking the reacted gas out and keeping your POS fueled.
I decided to use a Gallente tower because it has a bonus to silo capacity, meaning I can put in double the materials into my silo. This allows my reactions to run twice as long as an unbonused tower, which means I can go longer without having to run logistics. This of course comes at the expense of having enough power for defenses, so it's a risky game.
The biggest challenge remaining is the amount of time it takes to run logistics to the hole. C1s are limited by jump mass, meaning the biggest thing I can bring in (in terms of hauling) is a DST. I currently use an Orca to get my materials from a trade hub to the system where my static is, but with the high volume of gas and fuel blocks it takes several trips to get everything where I need it to be. Add in the fact that you're always on the clock when it comes to wormhole connections and that makes for a hectic experience.
To combat this, I'm going to be getting a freighter alt off of a corpmate. I'll use the freighter to bring everything I need for the week (or more) all in one trip, then get everything brought into the hole. The less time I spend making trips to a trade hub the better in terms of time savings.
I'll keep you guys updated on my new reaction business!
Friday, February 20, 2015
Building a POS (Part 2)
To catch you up on the last part, I decided to start doing reactions in a C1 wormhole. This was my first time setting up a POS and I learned a number of lessons on the first day, including many :ccp: moments. I left off saying that I had onlined a few modules and ran out of time so I'd revisit it another day.
First thing's first, my wormhole alt only has anchoring to 1. I know, stupid. That means I've been needing to get my Orca alt into the hole to do anchoring and onlining, so that slows things down a bit. I need to train my wormhole alt some more, that's on the to-do list. So, another lesson to add to what I learned last time: you need anchoring to level 3 if you want to be able to anchor and online all types of POS mods. This further compounds the fact that you need to be able to online and offline reaction mods to load/unload the products. I really need to train anchoring.
I decided to finish getting my defenses anchored. I had my ECM up as well as my points and webs but hadn't put guns up yet. There are a few quirks of guns when it comes to POSes. Small guns work on ship sizes up to Cruisers while Medium guns work best on Battleships (which I don't worry much about). Large guns are more for capitals and dreads (which I don't worry about at all in a C1). Also, small guns use medium ammo. Medium guns use large ammo. Why? To be confusing I guess, who knows.
One weird limitation is that you're restricted to launching for corporation only 3 times per minute. If you're trying to put 40+ POS mods out in space, that's very limiting. The good news is that while I had lots of guns to anchor and online, I read on Reddit that you can split your guns into stacks and select bunches of them and launch them all for corporation. I split everything into three stacks and was able to launch 3 guns at a time, meaning 9 per minute. That's much better than before. Once I finished struggling with getting the mods into their approximate positions, I had to go online them one by one (I wish there was an onlining queue - you know, online all the defenses now please POS).
Here's the good news about POS guns: you don't have to fly to each gun to put ammo in them. I was concerned that I would have to fly to each cluster to add ammo but luckily for me I was able to do it all from the center of my POS.
The next step was getting the reaction lines set up. The reaction lines need to be set up nice and close to each other but you also want to be able to be within 5000 meters of each of the reaction mods from where your gas is stored so you don't have to move your ship to load/unload gas into the silos. This ended up being easier than setting up the defenses because I was aligning the reaction mods close to where I was, meaning I could zoom in nicely and place them how I Wanted them placed. I guess we'll see soon if I placed them in the right spots to allow the reactions to work, because I haven't started reactions yet.
Now, most of my defenses are up and my reaction lines are ready. I still need to online a bunch of my defenses but I keep tackling this project late at night and end up getting tired. The next steps involve getting the gas and blueprints for reactions as well as bringing in more fuel for my tower.
Fwew, this is a lot more work than I thought it would be.
First thing's first, my wormhole alt only has anchoring to 1. I know, stupid. That means I've been needing to get my Orca alt into the hole to do anchoring and onlining, so that slows things down a bit. I need to train my wormhole alt some more, that's on the to-do list. So, another lesson to add to what I learned last time: you need anchoring to level 3 if you want to be able to anchor and online all types of POS mods. This further compounds the fact that you need to be able to online and offline reaction mods to load/unload the products. I really need to train anchoring.
I decided to finish getting my defenses anchored. I had my ECM up as well as my points and webs but hadn't put guns up yet. There are a few quirks of guns when it comes to POSes. Small guns work on ship sizes up to Cruisers while Medium guns work best on Battleships (which I don't worry much about). Large guns are more for capitals and dreads (which I don't worry about at all in a C1). Also, small guns use medium ammo. Medium guns use large ammo. Why? To be confusing I guess, who knows.
One weird limitation is that you're restricted to launching for corporation only 3 times per minute. If you're trying to put 40+ POS mods out in space, that's very limiting. The good news is that while I had lots of guns to anchor and online, I read on Reddit that you can split your guns into stacks and select bunches of them and launch them all for corporation. I split everything into three stacks and was able to launch 3 guns at a time, meaning 9 per minute. That's much better than before. Once I finished struggling with getting the mods into their approximate positions, I had to go online them one by one (I wish there was an onlining queue - you know, online all the defenses now please POS).
Here's the good news about POS guns: you don't have to fly to each gun to put ammo in them. I was concerned that I would have to fly to each cluster to add ammo but luckily for me I was able to do it all from the center of my POS.
The next step was getting the reaction lines set up. The reaction lines need to be set up nice and close to each other but you also want to be able to be within 5000 meters of each of the reaction mods from where your gas is stored so you don't have to move your ship to load/unload gas into the silos. This ended up being easier than setting up the defenses because I was aligning the reaction mods close to where I was, meaning I could zoom in nicely and place them how I Wanted them placed. I guess we'll see soon if I placed them in the right spots to allow the reactions to work, because I haven't started reactions yet.
Now, most of my defenses are up and my reaction lines are ready. I still need to online a bunch of my defenses but I keep tackling this project late at night and end up getting tired. The next steps involve getting the gas and blueprints for reactions as well as bringing in more fuel for my tower.
Fwew, this is a lot more work than I thought it would be.
Monday, February 16, 2015
First Time POS Builder (CCP Please)
As my regular readers might recall, I used to spend some time in a hole with an alt of a player in a prominent w-space corporation. He took me under his wing and taught me about industry and reactions in w-space. When he decided to stop, I was picked up by another knowledgeable individual who taught me even more.
I've recently gotten it into my head that it's my turn to start doing w-space industry. I've decided to focus on what I know best and that's gas reactions. I've decided to set myself up in a C1 with a high-sec static. I found one occupied with two other small corporations and with some diplomacy I got their blessing to set up a POS in their hole. Side note: it always amazes me how far you can get with a quick message. Even when English is not the first language, I've found people to be very friendly. I'm on good terms with one of my Polish neighbours now; this is why I love EVE.
First thing first, I had a decent connection and fired up my Orca alt to buy everything I needed and haul it down to the high sec system where my static was. I learned a few things. First, POS mods take up a lot of space. It took me two full Orca trips to get all my POS mods hauled, then two trips to get 2 weeks worth of POS fuel and another trip to get a full load of Stront. That's 5 trips in an Orca! I wish I had a freighter. Now, Bob was not pleased with me this day. I didn't notice the hole go EOL and vanish completely, meaning all of my hauling was for naught! I checked the new high-sec static and it was 40 jumps from my old static. Nope, not hauling things in today.
The next day I checked my static and Bob was smiling down on me, it was only 6 jumps from where all my stuff was sitting in a station. I grabbed the Orca and quickly moved everything, as I didn't want to lose this opportunity. Once I got there, I loaded up a bunch of stuff into my DST and headed for the moon I wanted to use. Here's where I ran into my first problem. I couldn't launch anything from my fleet hangar for the corporation, so I couldn't launch the tower. CCP, why?! I had to get my alt to quickly buy an Iteron V and cargo expanders and come grab the tower to launch it. Ridiculous. Then it took 30 minutes to anchor it and 30 more minutes to online the tower.
Once my tower was online, I went about and finished bringing the rest of the mods, fuel and stront in. Then I started anchoring some defenses. First of all, anchoring defenses is like playing the scanning game with probes but is less intuitive. Things work based on a green box that you would think would turn red if you put it over another module, but no, it doesn't work like that. How some people get all their mods lined up perfectly is beyond me, because it was too frustrating for me to deal with. I just put them roughly over where they needed to be.
Another limitation of anchoring is that you can only anchor/ online one thing at a time. This isn't a big deal for anchoring (because it takes seconds) but onlining takes a couple of minutes. I thought hey, I could online something and continue anchoring while I'm waiting so I could make the most of my time. Nope, can't anchor while the tower is onlining something. Come on CCP, there's no reason for that.
Eventually I just ran out of time, so I onlined some things and decided to come back to tackle it another day.
Lessons learned:
1. Can't use a fleet hangar to launch POS mods
2. POS mods take up a lot of room
3. Fuel blocks take up a lot of room
4. Anchoring/ onlining things takes forever
Things to do:
1. Bring in more fuel
2. Bring in gas
3. Set up reaction lines.
Til next time!
I've recently gotten it into my head that it's my turn to start doing w-space industry. I've decided to focus on what I know best and that's gas reactions. I've decided to set myself up in a C1 with a high-sec static. I found one occupied with two other small corporations and with some diplomacy I got their blessing to set up a POS in their hole. Side note: it always amazes me how far you can get with a quick message. Even when English is not the first language, I've found people to be very friendly. I'm on good terms with one of my Polish neighbours now; this is why I love EVE.
First thing first, I had a decent connection and fired up my Orca alt to buy everything I needed and haul it down to the high sec system where my static was. I learned a few things. First, POS mods take up a lot of space. It took me two full Orca trips to get all my POS mods hauled, then two trips to get 2 weeks worth of POS fuel and another trip to get a full load of Stront. That's 5 trips in an Orca! I wish I had a freighter. Now, Bob was not pleased with me this day. I didn't notice the hole go EOL and vanish completely, meaning all of my hauling was for naught! I checked the new high-sec static and it was 40 jumps from my old static. Nope, not hauling things in today.
The next day I checked my static and Bob was smiling down on me, it was only 6 jumps from where all my stuff was sitting in a station. I grabbed the Orca and quickly moved everything, as I didn't want to lose this opportunity. Once I got there, I loaded up a bunch of stuff into my DST and headed for the moon I wanted to use. Here's where I ran into my first problem. I couldn't launch anything from my fleet hangar for the corporation, so I couldn't launch the tower. CCP, why?! I had to get my alt to quickly buy an Iteron V and cargo expanders and come grab the tower to launch it. Ridiculous. Then it took 30 minutes to anchor it and 30 more minutes to online the tower.
Once my tower was online, I went about and finished bringing the rest of the mods, fuel and stront in. Then I started anchoring some defenses. First of all, anchoring defenses is like playing the scanning game with probes but is less intuitive. Things work based on a green box that you would think would turn red if you put it over another module, but no, it doesn't work like that. How some people get all their mods lined up perfectly is beyond me, because it was too frustrating for me to deal with. I just put them roughly over where they needed to be.
Another limitation of anchoring is that you can only anchor/ online one thing at a time. This isn't a big deal for anchoring (because it takes seconds) but onlining takes a couple of minutes. I thought hey, I could online something and continue anchoring while I'm waiting so I could make the most of my time. Nope, can't anchor while the tower is onlining something. Come on CCP, there's no reason for that.
Eventually I just ran out of time, so I onlined some things and decided to come back to tackle it another day.
Lessons learned:
1. Can't use a fleet hangar to launch POS mods
2. POS mods take up a lot of room
3. Fuel blocks take up a lot of room
4. Anchoring/ onlining things takes forever
Things to do:
1. Bring in more fuel
2. Bring in gas
3. Set up reaction lines.
Til next time!
Wednesday, July 23, 2014
Crius Aftermath
Crius dropped yesterday, bringing a ton of new industry changes and bringing a lot of uncertainty as to how the markets would react to all of the changes. Already, the issues have been piling up and CCP already released Crius 1.1 today to fix several bugs that have popped up.
The EVE Online forums have been swamped with new posts about the industry changes. Usually, they're complaining posts or reporting unusual activity in the industry interface.
Apparently, there was a gold rush for moon spots in the high security systems that opened up with Crius. There are allegedly hundreds of moons that have been taken by anchored small towers with tags saying that they are all for sale.
Industrial activities taking place in systems for the first time have also been causing problems with the new "system cost index", which was particularly troubling for those in wormholes conducting industry for the first time. This was apparently fixed with the patch today, but I haven't heard whether or not it has been fixed.
I took a quick look at market prices to see what is going on. I'm pleased to report that the average fuel block prices have not changed too significantly, although Caldari fuel blocks seem to be having the most changes right now. The average price of small Caldari Control Towers has also spiked over the past two days, probably reflecting an increase in demand for research POSes. It looks like the medium and large variants have not had any impact on their prices.
Third party applications such as EVE Isk Per Hour (IPH) have not yet been updated to Crius, rendering them fairly useless for the time being. I have read that IPH is in the process of being updated. As you can imagine, with all of the Crius changes it will probably take a while to finish doing the updates.
It'll probably take a while for things to settle down, but hopefully everyone has been enjoying the industry changes so far. I know that I'm personally looking forward to trying out all of the new changes, just as soon as my character finishes training those T2 skills!
The EVE Online forums have been swamped with new posts about the industry changes. Usually, they're complaining posts or reporting unusual activity in the industry interface.
Apparently, there was a gold rush for moon spots in the high security systems that opened up with Crius. There are allegedly hundreds of moons that have been taken by anchored small towers with tags saying that they are all for sale.
Industrial activities taking place in systems for the first time have also been causing problems with the new "system cost index", which was particularly troubling for those in wormholes conducting industry for the first time. This was apparently fixed with the patch today, but I haven't heard whether or not it has been fixed.
I took a quick look at market prices to see what is going on. I'm pleased to report that the average fuel block prices have not changed too significantly, although Caldari fuel blocks seem to be having the most changes right now. The average price of small Caldari Control Towers has also spiked over the past two days, probably reflecting an increase in demand for research POSes. It looks like the medium and large variants have not had any impact on their prices.
Third party applications such as EVE Isk Per Hour (IPH) have not yet been updated to Crius, rendering them fairly useless for the time being. I have read that IPH is in the process of being updated. As you can imagine, with all of the Crius changes it will probably take a while to finish doing the updates.
It'll probably take a while for things to settle down, but hopefully everyone has been enjoying the industry changes so far. I know that I'm personally looking forward to trying out all of the new changes, just as soon as my character finishes training those T2 skills!
Tuesday, July 22, 2014
Crius is Here!
Well, this morning around 10:00 EVE time I was up for work and decided to patch my client for Crius before leaving so that I wouldn't have to do it when I got home. Luckily, it's been deployed without a hitch so hopefully there are tons of people excited about the changes to industry. I bet there's a bit of a race right now for people clamoring to get the best moons in high-sec systems that you couldn't previously anchor POSes in.
One issue right off the bat is that blueprints locked in containers cannot be used for industry, so this bug could be affecting some people. This is not the only bug right now, so if you have issues, be sure to check out the Crius Issues thread.
The corporation that my wormhole alt is in, The Wakizashi, is both a wormhole and industry corp. Therefore, Crius should be a big change for everyone in the corp. Additionally, my manufacturing alt is still training up the skills required for T2 production. At 10 million ISK per skill book, I have quite a bit of ISK to spend to be able to even produce a decent variety of T2 items. Nonetheless, I'll be looking forward to starting manufacturing with her. Hopefully I'll be able to get a better handle on whether or not to move forward with a POS or do manufacturing and research in a station. I do have a POS already anchored so finding a free moon won't be an issue unless I feel like moving.
Either way, I'm excited to see what changes Crius brings to the market. Hopefully you're prepared and ready to hit the ground running!
One issue right off the bat is that blueprints locked in containers cannot be used for industry, so this bug could be affecting some people. This is not the only bug right now, so if you have issues, be sure to check out the Crius Issues thread.
The corporation that my wormhole alt is in, The Wakizashi, is both a wormhole and industry corp. Therefore, Crius should be a big change for everyone in the corp. Additionally, my manufacturing alt is still training up the skills required for T2 production. At 10 million ISK per skill book, I have quite a bit of ISK to spend to be able to even produce a decent variety of T2 items. Nonetheless, I'll be looking forward to starting manufacturing with her. Hopefully I'll be able to get a better handle on whether or not to move forward with a POS or do manufacturing and research in a station. I do have a POS already anchored so finding a free moon won't be an issue unless I feel like moving.
Either way, I'm excited to see what changes Crius brings to the market. Hopefully you're prepared and ready to hit the ground running!
Friday, July 18, 2014
Crius is Coming
Crius is just a few days away now and CCP has released a final dev blog to go over all of the changes that have made it into the release, and also to go over all of the things they talked about but decided not to add to the release at this time.
This release is set to really shake up industry with the removal of slots, the removal of the standings requirement to anchor POSes, "teams" that bring buffs, and a rework of the ME and TE (previously PE) system.
For those of you who are interested in industry but might be confused about the changes or want a good overview from someone who knows industry well, EVE University member Tinman Spectacular will be holding a class on all things Crius on Monday July 21st at 00:00 (Sunday night for those in the Americas).
Here's a quick bio on Tinman:
Finally, there is still some work to be done reworking the old Material Efficiency skill, which is being renamed to Advanced Industry in Crius and is changing from reducing the materials requirements for production to something else. What is that something else, you ask? Well, it's still in the air. Right now it's a slight time reduction but the community and now CCP Greyscale think that we can do better. If you have an opinion for the skill, be sure to check out the threadnought on the EVE Online forums.
My manufacturing alt has been cooking for some time now. I'm now at the point where she basically only needs to train the specific skills required for T2 production. That means that I'll be able to dive into T2 production soon after Crius lands, but after the initial shock that the market is going to have as it adjusts to the Crius changes. Yes, I am predicting a shock to the market when Crius releases as manufacturers adjust their supply chains and prices to account for the changes to installation costs all around EVE. Also, some manufacturers who used to build T2 items in a POS might now manufacture in a station at slower speeds (as to not risk their BPOs), and that could mean less supply for some T2 items in the short run. Again, I'm expecting there to be a shock but it will stabilize with time as everyone becomes more comfortable with the Crius changes.
All in all, I'm looking forward to the changes and I'm excited to get my industry alt started in the new environment that Crius will bring.
This release is set to really shake up industry with the removal of slots, the removal of the standings requirement to anchor POSes, "teams" that bring buffs, and a rework of the ME and TE (previously PE) system.
For those of you who are interested in industry but might be confused about the changes or want a good overview from someone who knows industry well, EVE University member Tinman Spectacular will be holding a class on all things Crius on Monday July 21st at 00:00 (Sunday night for those in the Americas).
Here's a quick bio on Tinman:
I'm a former producer whose made everything from frigates to dreadnoughts, and a lot of stuff in between. I've made mistakes, I've made enemies, and I've made my fair share of billions. My lines were shut down about a year ago, my star-bases shuttered (except for the high-sec POS I gave away), and my blueprints were all packed away. With the industry changes coming I found renewed energy and enthusiasm for all things Industry, and have spent a great deal of time preparing for next week when I plan to jump head first back into production. See you there!
Finally, there is still some work to be done reworking the old Material Efficiency skill, which is being renamed to Advanced Industry in Crius and is changing from reducing the materials requirements for production to something else. What is that something else, you ask? Well, it's still in the air. Right now it's a slight time reduction but the community and now CCP Greyscale think that we can do better. If you have an opinion for the skill, be sure to check out the threadnought on the EVE Online forums.
My manufacturing alt has been cooking for some time now. I'm now at the point where she basically only needs to train the specific skills required for T2 production. That means that I'll be able to dive into T2 production soon after Crius lands, but after the initial shock that the market is going to have as it adjusts to the Crius changes. Yes, I am predicting a shock to the market when Crius releases as manufacturers adjust their supply chains and prices to account for the changes to installation costs all around EVE. Also, some manufacturers who used to build T2 items in a POS might now manufacture in a station at slower speeds (as to not risk their BPOs), and that could mean less supply for some T2 items in the short run. Again, I'm expecting there to be a shock but it will stabilize with time as everyone becomes more comfortable with the Crius changes.
All in all, I'm looking forward to the changes and I'm excited to get my industry alt started in the new environment that Crius will bring.
Thursday, June 19, 2014
Crius: Scaling Costs and POSes
One of the big changes coming in Crius is the removal of slots for manufacturing, research and invention. Instead, CCP has decided to implement a scaling cost system that increases as industry activity increases in the system. In addition, you will be able to bid on "teams" for a particular system, and these teams will have certain bonuses that will benefit you in some way.
On one hand, these changes will remove the barrier to entry to T2 production. It has been well known that the wait for research slots in high-sec is extraordinarily large. Up to now, these long wait times have made owning a high-sec research POS all but mandatory for T2 production. With scaling costs, anyone will be able to conduct research anywhere, the only limitation being finding an appropriate station and having the ISK available to install your job.
However, these scaling costs will mean that systems located close to major trade hubs such as Jita will likely experience high costs as manufacturers look to minimize the distance needed to transport their final goods to the market. Depending on the activity in the system, the installation costs might skyrocket, meaning that people will need to spread out to keep their costs down.
Alternatively, you can invest in a POS. However, the scaling cost system will unintuitively apply to POSes as well. A POS located in a system near Jita with many other manufacturers will have high installation costs just like those manufacturing in a station. Although there are linear bonuses that apply when you have more than one assembly online at your POS, for small items the sheer number of assemblies that are needed will only benefit those who manufacture very large amounts of small T2 items. To receive the maximum bonus from ammunition or component assemblies, you would need to have 50 of them for a bonus of 25%. This seems unrealistic and poorly thought out by CCP.
From an economics point of view, investing in capital should decrease your variable costs for manufacturing. Someone who installs a job at a station should have a higher variable cost because they have invested 0 ISK into the capital required to manufacture their items. If you have a POS, you need to purchase assemblies (capital outlay), so you should expect to receive some benefit. Yes, you do build things faster by using a POS assembly as opposed to using a station. But why should the installation costs in my POS be related to people installing jobs at nearby stations or other POSes? CCP justifies is as the cost of hiring skilled labour, since apparently these arrays now need workers too. Apparently, it even applies in w-space.
As a budding T2 manufacturer, I won't be taking on these additional costs as cuts into my profit. I'm expecting to see the prices of T2 items increase with Crius, reflecting the higher cost of installing jobs. We'll have to wait to see how the market as a whole reacts to these changes.
On one hand, these changes will remove the barrier to entry to T2 production. It has been well known that the wait for research slots in high-sec is extraordinarily large. Up to now, these long wait times have made owning a high-sec research POS all but mandatory for T2 production. With scaling costs, anyone will be able to conduct research anywhere, the only limitation being finding an appropriate station and having the ISK available to install your job.
However, these scaling costs will mean that systems located close to major trade hubs such as Jita will likely experience high costs as manufacturers look to minimize the distance needed to transport their final goods to the market. Depending on the activity in the system, the installation costs might skyrocket, meaning that people will need to spread out to keep their costs down.
Alternatively, you can invest in a POS. However, the scaling cost system will unintuitively apply to POSes as well. A POS located in a system near Jita with many other manufacturers will have high installation costs just like those manufacturing in a station. Although there are linear bonuses that apply when you have more than one assembly online at your POS, for small items the sheer number of assemblies that are needed will only benefit those who manufacture very large amounts of small T2 items. To receive the maximum bonus from ammunition or component assemblies, you would need to have 50 of them for a bonus of 25%. This seems unrealistic and poorly thought out by CCP.
From an economics point of view, investing in capital should decrease your variable costs for manufacturing. Someone who installs a job at a station should have a higher variable cost because they have invested 0 ISK into the capital required to manufacture their items. If you have a POS, you need to purchase assemblies (capital outlay), so you should expect to receive some benefit. Yes, you do build things faster by using a POS assembly as opposed to using a station. But why should the installation costs in my POS be related to people installing jobs at nearby stations or other POSes? CCP justifies is as the cost of hiring skilled labour, since apparently these arrays now need workers too. Apparently, it even applies in w-space.
As a budding T2 manufacturer, I won't be taking on these additional costs as cuts into my profit. I'm expecting to see the prices of T2 items increase with Crius, reflecting the higher cost of installing jobs. We'll have to wait to see how the market as a whole reacts to these changes.
Tuesday, June 17, 2014
Crius: Invention Changes
The industry changes coming to us with the Crius expansion have now hit SiSi, meaning that everyone who is interested in seeing what's new can log on there and check it out for themselves.
Since I'm working on a manufacturing alt, T2 production and the invention that is associated with it is something that I have been reading up on. For example, it is currently necessary to make max-run BPCs of the T1 BPO for T2 items that you wish to make. This is so you will be able to have a max-run T2 BPC with a successful invention. This will no longer be the case in Crius.
There are three important changes to invention coming in Crius:
Copy times for T1 blueprints are being reduced below the build times.
Invention now only requires a one-run BPC. If you use a BPC with more than one run, the invention process will remove one run from the original number of runs.
Extra materials have gone the way of the dodo bird, making it easier to see at a glance how many materials you will need.
These changes will improve the quality of life for T2 manufacturers as they will help to reduce the number of clicks that are required to start invention jobs. Additionally, they will help improve the quality of life for all manufacturers.
One thing I never understood was the extra materials. In addition to not being impacted by ME research, the fragmented nature of the materials meant it would take a longer time to tally up how much you needed to buy in order to install a job. Like others, I'm sure, I have been relying on IPH to let me know how many minerals I need to purchase for x runs of a manufacturing job.
It's important to note however that Crius will have many changes for industry as a whole, but not invention. More changes to invention will be coming after Crius goes live, according to CSM mynnna.
For me, these changes will be easy to learn as I haven't started working extensively in T2 manufacturing as of yet. For others who have been doing T2 manufacturing since before I started playing, it might take some getting used to. Either way, these are but a taste of the changes to invention that will becoming later down the line. I'm looking forward to seeing what CCP has in store for us.
Since I'm working on a manufacturing alt, T2 production and the invention that is associated with it is something that I have been reading up on. For example, it is currently necessary to make max-run BPCs of the T1 BPO for T2 items that you wish to make. This is so you will be able to have a max-run T2 BPC with a successful invention. This will no longer be the case in Crius.
There are three important changes to invention coming in Crius:
These changes will improve the quality of life for T2 manufacturers as they will help to reduce the number of clicks that are required to start invention jobs. Additionally, they will help improve the quality of life for all manufacturers.
One thing I never understood was the extra materials. In addition to not being impacted by ME research, the fragmented nature of the materials meant it would take a longer time to tally up how much you needed to buy in order to install a job. Like others, I'm sure, I have been relying on IPH to let me know how many minerals I need to purchase for x runs of a manufacturing job.
It's important to note however that Crius will have many changes for industry as a whole, but not invention. More changes to invention will be coming after Crius goes live, according to CSM mynnna.
For me, these changes will be easy to learn as I haven't started working extensively in T2 manufacturing as of yet. For others who have been doing T2 manufacturing since before I started playing, it might take some getting used to. Either way, these are but a taste of the changes to invention that will becoming later down the line. I'm looking forward to seeing what CCP has in store for us.
Monday, June 16, 2014
Getting Started in Industry
I have a wide variety of interests. Of late, I have become interested in developing a manufacturing alt. There are so many skills required to make a profitable manufacturer, and some of them are a long train. In particular, Material Efficiency 5 is basically a mandatory train and took quite a while to complete.
There does not seem to be much profit in T1 manufacturing. At least, not in the system where I will be selling my goods. Therefore my goal is to move into T2 production where some of the profits lie. T2 manufacturing is interesting because of the invention mechanic, where you have a chance of inventing a T2 blueprint copy (BPC) from a T1 blueprint original (BPO) and a couple other items.
As of right now, you're all but required to have a research POS to do T2 invention in high-sec. This is because the majority of the research slots are being used and the wait time for them can be staggering. This is set to change in the Crius expansion where the limit on the number of research slots will be removed and instead and cost will scale with the demand at that particular station. This means that new industrialists looking to do T2 production will be able to do so without the use of a POS.
What this means is that as a new industrialist myself, a POS will not be necessary at low volumes of goods. However, as a stubborn individual, I will probably use a POS regardless and try to manufacture enough to at least cover the costs of fuel. It's possible that the changes to POS anchoring in high-sec will increase demand for POS fuel, driving up the price and making my tower more expensive. If that happens, I'll need to rethink things.
In the meantime, as I'm gathering skills for T2 production, I need to find what products I'd like to manufacture. It can be difficult to find profitable markets with the prevalence of tools like ISK Per Hour. It seems to me that people spot newly profitable things and rush to manufacture it, driving down the prices and profit. I was looking at the reactions market the other day and noticed the same thing. One particular type of reaction was very profitable and a few days later it had become much less profitable. I'm guessing that it's due to the fact that people switched their reactions and flooded the market with supply. Then again, it could also be due to changes in the price of the inputs. I haven't really looked into it more closely than that.
Luckily, I have time to figure out what I want to manufacture as my core skills finish training. Once those are done, however, I need to have a grasp of what I want to manufacture as I'll need to train the specific skills to be able to manufacture those specific T2 items.
When I actually start into T2 production, I'll post again with the challenges I've encountered and the lessons I've learned.
There does not seem to be much profit in T1 manufacturing. At least, not in the system where I will be selling my goods. Therefore my goal is to move into T2 production where some of the profits lie. T2 manufacturing is interesting because of the invention mechanic, where you have a chance of inventing a T2 blueprint copy (BPC) from a T1 blueprint original (BPO) and a couple other items.
As of right now, you're all but required to have a research POS to do T2 invention in high-sec. This is because the majority of the research slots are being used and the wait time for them can be staggering. This is set to change in the Crius expansion where the limit on the number of research slots will be removed and instead and cost will scale with the demand at that particular station. This means that new industrialists looking to do T2 production will be able to do so without the use of a POS.
What this means is that as a new industrialist myself, a POS will not be necessary at low volumes of goods. However, as a stubborn individual, I will probably use a POS regardless and try to manufacture enough to at least cover the costs of fuel. It's possible that the changes to POS anchoring in high-sec will increase demand for POS fuel, driving up the price and making my tower more expensive. If that happens, I'll need to rethink things.
In the meantime, as I'm gathering skills for T2 production, I need to find what products I'd like to manufacture. It can be difficult to find profitable markets with the prevalence of tools like ISK Per Hour. It seems to me that people spot newly profitable things and rush to manufacture it, driving down the prices and profit. I was looking at the reactions market the other day and noticed the same thing. One particular type of reaction was very profitable and a few days later it had become much less profitable. I'm guessing that it's due to the fact that people switched their reactions and flooded the market with supply. Then again, it could also be due to changes in the price of the inputs. I haven't really looked into it more closely than that.
Luckily, I have time to figure out what I want to manufacture as my core skills finish training. Once those are done, however, I need to have a grasp of what I want to manufacture as I'll need to train the specific skills to be able to manufacture those specific T2 items.
When I actually start into T2 production, I'll post again with the challenges I've encountered and the lessons I've learned.
Thursday, June 05, 2014
Hi, I am an EVE Altoholic
Hi, my name is Jeff Kione and I am an EVE altoholic. Welcome to my blog.
The purpose of this blog is to give the reader a new player's perspective on EVE Online. My blog will primarily focus on my interests, which at this time are wormholes, trading and the economy, and industry.
One of the best things about EVE is that there is such a wide variety of things to do and to try. As someone who has a lot of interests, it was not long before I started creating alts to try out different aspects of the game. I have a WH PI alt, a trader alt and a manufacturing alt at this time, in addition to my main character.
I started playing EVE a few months ago when I heard about one of the big null-sec battles on Reddit. As a big MMO player, I was surprised that I had not heard of EVE Online before and I was excited to try it out. I did some research on the game and heard about it's incredibly difficult learning curve. The more I researched, the more interested I became, and I was incredibly happy when my download finished. After I joined the game, my first priority was to join EVE University because I was using its Wiki as my primary source of EVE information.
My first goal as a new player was to get into mining because I had read much about mining being a good way to start the game. While mining does generate ISK, it was not long before I grew incredibly tired of shooting asteroids in high-sec. I participated in one (and only one) shared can mining fleet that lasted for several hours. The ISK I made from that fleet was nice, but the process was so mindnumbingly boring that I needed to find something else to do.
Exploration had been something that I was interested in after doing the exploration tutorials at the start of the game and hearing of the vast riches that could be obtained by doing it. I remember quite clearly scanning down my first wormhole and mentioning what I had found in the EVE public chat. Several people encouraged me to jump in, perhaps hoping that I would be met with a fleet of wormhole denziens on the other side. Lucky for me, I made it out of that wormhole alive, but I got bit by the wormhole bug and became very focused on gaining the skills required to live in w-space.
Fast forward to the present and I am still with EVE University. I am a member of the Wormhole Campus and I'm living full-time in w-space. I have learned a good deal about what it takes to live in w-space, and hopefully I can pass some of that knowledge on through this blog.
My next several blog posts will consist of posts that I've already written and published on the EVE University forums. They detail my initial foray into w-space, prior to my main character joining the Wormhole Campus. Once I have caught up, I will begin posting about my current endeavours.
Until next time!
The purpose of this blog is to give the reader a new player's perspective on EVE Online. My blog will primarily focus on my interests, which at this time are wormholes, trading and the economy, and industry.
One of the best things about EVE is that there is such a wide variety of things to do and to try. As someone who has a lot of interests, it was not long before I started creating alts to try out different aspects of the game. I have a WH PI alt, a trader alt and a manufacturing alt at this time, in addition to my main character.
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I started playing EVE a few months ago when I heard about one of the big null-sec battles on Reddit. As a big MMO player, I was surprised that I had not heard of EVE Online before and I was excited to try it out. I did some research on the game and heard about it's incredibly difficult learning curve. The more I researched, the more interested I became, and I was incredibly happy when my download finished. After I joined the game, my first priority was to join EVE University because I was using its Wiki as my primary source of EVE information.
My first goal as a new player was to get into mining because I had read much about mining being a good way to start the game. While mining does generate ISK, it was not long before I grew incredibly tired of shooting asteroids in high-sec. I participated in one (and only one) shared can mining fleet that lasted for several hours. The ISK I made from that fleet was nice, but the process was so mindnumbingly boring that I needed to find something else to do.
Exploration had been something that I was interested in after doing the exploration tutorials at the start of the game and hearing of the vast riches that could be obtained by doing it. I remember quite clearly scanning down my first wormhole and mentioning what I had found in the EVE public chat. Several people encouraged me to jump in, perhaps hoping that I would be met with a fleet of wormhole denziens on the other side. Lucky for me, I made it out of that wormhole alive, but I got bit by the wormhole bug and became very focused on gaining the skills required to live in w-space.
Fast forward to the present and I am still with EVE University. I am a member of the Wormhole Campus and I'm living full-time in w-space. I have learned a good deal about what it takes to live in w-space, and hopefully I can pass some of that knowledge on through this blog.
My next several blog posts will consist of posts that I've already written and published on the EVE University forums. They detail my initial foray into w-space, prior to my main character joining the Wormhole Campus. Once I have caught up, I will begin posting about my current endeavours.
Until next time!
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